The discovery of a chimp group’s 390-word “language” has profound implications for the evolution of human speech.
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“We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” is a short story by Philip K. Dick first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in April 1966. It features a melding of reality, false memory, and real memory. The story has been the subject of two film adaptations, 1990’s Total Recall, with Arnold Schwarzenegger as the story’s protagonist; and 2012’s same-titled with Colin Farrell in a similar role.
The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here’s how that’s possible.
Tiny traces of protein lingering in the bones and teeth of ancient humans could soon transform scientists’ efforts to unravel the secrets of the evolution of our species.
Researchers believe a new technique – known as proteomics – could allow them to identify the proteins from which our predecessors’ bodies were constructed and bring new insights into the past 2 million years of humanity’s history.
All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe… Observer-participancy gives rise to information.
It will protect ocean habitats beyond the boundaries of coastal waters that fall under the governance of national governments.
For fans of bioethical nightmares, it’s been a real stonker of a month. First, we had the suggestion that we use comatose women’s wombs to house surrogate pregnancies. Now, it appears we might have a snazzy idea for what to do with their brains, too: to turn them into hyper-efficient biological computers.
Lately, you see, techies have been worrying about the natural, physical limits of conventional, silicon-based computing. Recent developments in ‘machine learning’, in particular, have required exponentially greater amounts of energy – and corporations are concerned that further technological progress will soon become environmentally unsustainable. Thankfully, in a paper published this week, a team of American scientists pointed out something rather nifty: that the walnut-shaped, spongy computer in your skull doesn’t appear to be bound by anything like the same limitations – and that it might, therefore, provide us with something of a solution.
The human brain, the paper explains, is slower than machines at performing basic tasks (like mathematical sums), but much, much better at processing complex problems that involve limited, or ambiguous, data. Humans learn, that is, how to make smart decisions quickly, even when we only have small fragments of information to go on, in a way that computers simply can’t. For anything more sophisticated than arithmetic, sponge beats silicon by a mile.
And yet the scientific consensus is that 1.5℃ is the real upper limit we can risk. Beyond that, dangerous tipping points could spell even more frequent disasters.
Luckily, the IMO will revise its strategy this July. I and many others expect far more ambition—because zero shipping emissions by 2050 is a necessity to keep the 1.5℃ limit credible. That gives us less than three decades to clean up an industry whose ships have an average life of 25 years. The 2050 timeline conceals that our carbon budget will likely run out far more quickly—requiring urgent action for all sectors, including shipping.
In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast we meet three scientists who are trying to answer a question that humanity has long pondered: does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe?
Peter Ma and Leandro Rizk of the University of Toronto and Cherry Ng of the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Orleans are part of a team that has used machine learning to identify eight potential “technosignatures” in data from the Robert C Byrd Green Bank Telescope. The trio explain how they look for signs of intelligent life in radio-telescope data and how machine learning gives a helping hand.
Ng also talks about her research on how signals from pulsars could be used to detect gravitational waves.
A new test finally ignited a nuclear fusion reaction that unleashed more energy than it took in. This raises hopes that someday the reaction that powers the sun could also cleanly power activities here on Earth.
The experiment took place at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif. The U.S. Department of Energy announced its achievement on December 13.
“This is a monumental breakthrough,” says Gilbert Collins. This physicist works at the University of Rochester in New York and did not take part in the new research. “Since I started in this field, fusion was always 50 years away,” Collins says. “With this achievement, the landscape has changed.”
